THE REV. JACK RYAN
NEW YORK — It was Sept. 13 when Jimmy Luongo called for the priest.
The Fresh Kills Landfill had reopened the day before and Luongo was the police investigator charged with making sense of tons of World Trade Center debris arriving by barge from across the river.
The task was overwhelming — and gruesome. Exhausted firefighters and police officers were working day and night in hopes of recovering the dead, including hundreds from their own ranks. Now family members were showing up at the dump, looking for proof of their loss, or some small artifact by which to remember their loved ones.
The Rev. Jack Ryan, a Jesuit from a nearby Catholic retreat house, responded to Luongo’s call.
“You see the results of true, consummate evil here, but you look at the workers and you see good,” Ryan said. “You see the consolation the families get just knowing these people have been up here, taking a quiet pride in their very tedious, very grim work.”
For 10 months, Ryan spent his days at Fresh Kills, passing out sandwiches, saying Mass and counseling those who had seen and smelled too much. Each night, he returned to the Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House, which had become home to weary police and firefighters and cadaver-sniffing dogs.
When the dump closed in July, bagpipers from the city sanitation department band wailed a dirge and Ryan stood before the last pile of rubble.
“This is the type of thing you never get over, but you will get used to it,” he told the workers and mourners. “You will experience joy in your lives again. Already the grass is growing here again. It’s like that.”
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Vignettes-They-were-there-2107819.php